


And It Tastes Like Freedom

by hannahbobana



Series: Wild Eyes, Burning Hearts [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 20:42:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19027561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannahbobana/pseuds/hannahbobana
Summary: Daphne Greengrass may not be a saint, but she sure as hell isn't a Death Eater.





	And It Tastes Like Freedom

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, so there was a version of this posted previously but I was unhappy with it and as such deleted it. This is an edited version that will have at least two more chapters. I hope you enjoy.

_Or perhaps in Slytherin,  
__You'll make your real friends,_  
Those cunning folk use any means,  
To achieve their ends.

* * *

 

Daphne Greengrass would never try to convince anyone that she was a saint. She’s a Slytherin through and through, pureblood as they came and a part of the Sacred 28, they had been sitting pretty at the top of the wizarding social world for hundreds of years. So why was it then that she looked on with horror as the Carrows, people who were supposed to be looking out for her future, ran rampant over her school?

“It’s about time they were sorted out,” Pansy said smugly a few seats down from Daphne at breakfast that morning.

She was talking about Longbottom and Ginny Weasley. Daphne felt sick in her stomach as she watched the two across the Great Hall. Longbottom’s face was a mess, black and blue, and he moved stiffly as he reached across the table for a bowl of cereal. Weasley didn’t look any better, less bruising, but clearly in a lot of pain judging by the way she winced every time she moved. Their friends watched them in concern and were clearly itching to help them out, but both Gryffindor’s had a stubborn set to their jaws and fire in their eyes.

“That Weasley girl is trash,” Pansy was still talking, Millicent at her side, as rapt an audience as always.

Daphne looked down her table and caught Tracy rolling her eyes and scowling at the two. She ducked her head to hide her own smile and picked at her plate. She found that she didn’t have much of an appetite these days. Once they had been dismissed, the Carrows and Snape having introduced set meal times, the Slytherin’s were led back to their dorm by Blaise, their new Head Boy, while the other houses were managed by their seventh-year prefects. They walked in silence, not like the chaos and noise that she had grown used to over the years. The first and second years were quiet, scared; their older housemates carrying a vein of anger in the tight tension of their shoulders. The spark of rebellion that would flash in their eyes when one of the Carrows punished them, or one of the favoured few used their new powers to dock points, hand out detentions.

It was like the Inquisitorial Squad of her fifth year, which she had thankfully managed to avoid, kids of Death Eaters mostly, who the Carrows gave power to. The sick feeling in her stomach that she used to get when Draco or Pansy would mutter insults under their breaths is a constant feeling now. She walks the halls flanked by her housemates, Theo at her side and Blaise breathing down her neck, and the rest of the school glares at her with hate and distrust. She’d lost friends, too. True friends. Not like the girls she shares her dormitory with. She regrets every time she laughed at someone she’d been taught to think of as less than her, she regrets every slur she’s ever said or thought, she regrets the silver and green noose sitting around her neck.

Back in the dungeons, she thought about going straight up to the dorm and curling herself into the soft feathery mattress of her four-poster bed. Merlin knows she’d had enough of her housemates for the day, but when she saw Pansy and Millicent making their way through the tunnels she decided to take a seat by the fire until she could sneak in later.

“Do you think she’s still talking about Weasley?” Theo asked, smirking as he dropped into the seat next to her.

She closed her book and lifted an eyebrow. “Does a phoenix burst into flame?”

Theo exhaled – a generous laugh in his language, and his eyes lit up. “Maybe I should ask her out, really wind Parkinson up.”

Daphne rolled her eyes. “Something tells me that Harry Potter’s girlfriend isn’t looking to spend any quality time with Death Eater kids.”

Theo waved her off. “Face like mine, won’t matter.”

“Perhaps the hat should think about adding a line for Slytherin vanity,” she said wryly.

The silence between them was comfortable, as it had been since they were children, and Daphne was glad that he was there with her for all of this. The first time they had met had been their parents trying to broker a relationship that would eventually lead to a marriage. Their fathers were friends going back to their own Hogwarts days and it would be an advantageous match for the two Pureblood families. Unluckily for them Daphne just wasn’t Theodore’s type. She lacked a few key components. He spread out, laying his feet across her lap and turned his head to the ceiling, sighing deeply. He quickly scanned the room.

“Have you heard from your father?” he asked finally.

She shook her head. Her father hadn’t written much since the start of the school year, to her or Astoria, and she knew Theo knew why. The Dark Lord wanted more from her father than peripheral support, and Mr. Nott had been tasked with getting it. She was terrified of the day it would fall back on her and Astoria, because for all of her parent’s faults, their ideologies and their prejudices, they did love her and her sister.

Theo shrugged. “No news is probably good news, right?”

She didn’t answer, just gently pushed his feet off of her before standing, ruffling his hair as she passed by as a goodnight. The other girls were already asleep by the time she got up there, thankfully, so she quickly got herself ready to sleep, knowing that tomorrow would be yet another long day.

* * *

 Defence Against the Dark Arts had become just the Dark Arts under Professor Amycus Carrow and it was compulsory for everyone. Today was torture curses. Unimaginable pain that could be inflicted upon those unlucky enough to be in the line of fire. She knew it was a lead up to something worse, something unforgivable. Beside her, Blaise was watching in disinterest, and in front, looking excited to be in class for the first time in their lives was Crabbe and Goyle. They were eyeing Longbottom and Finnigan hungrily.

“Do we have any volunteers?” Carrow was asking cruelly, his piggy eyes scanning the room before landing on Longbottom, as usual.

The boy squared his shoulders and stared at the professor defiantly. His friends looked worried. Glancing at Crabbe and Goyle she saw how eagerly they waited to be chosen. They would be, she knew, as they had been in every class since the beginning of the year. But to their surprise and her horror, Carrow’s eyes passed over them both, and landed on her. She stopped breathing. Blaise turned to her with eyebrows raised, an almost challenging smirk on his face. Shit, she thought. This was it. The fallback she had been expecting. Take a deep breath, she thought, at least it isn’t Tori. Tori wouldn’t cope. She could. Shaking, she stood as Longbottom did and moved slowly to the front of the room. All eyes were on her, Carrow’s taunting, Longbottom’s defiant, his friends angry on his behalf. She was just a conniving Slytherin, after all.

“You remember the curse, Miss Greengrass?”  
  
She nodded hollowly and raised her wand. Her hand was still shaking. Longbottom watched her with narrowed eyes, considering her carefully. She swallowed again.

“Get on with it Greengrass,” the professor said cruelly.

She couldn’t do it, she realised, and her wand hand lowered slightly. Neville Longbottom’s eyes widened. Professor Carrow stomped forward angrily, pushing her out of the way roughly. She stumbled and caught herself on the edge of a desk. She looked up and caught the eye of Seamus Finnigan who was watching her suspiciously.

“Weak, like your father,” he spat. He pointed at Crabbe who stood gleefully and took her place at the front of the room and pointed his wand at the Gryffindor, no hesitation. Daphne looked on, stomach turning. The curse had opened up a cut on Neville’s face, red blood oozing from it steadily, and dripping down his chin. He didn’t make a sound.

Daphne hoped that would be it and that they could go on to Transfiguration where McGonagall would give them notes to copy and she could fade into the background. But when Professor Carrow turned back to her with an evil smile she knew it wasn’t over. This was punishment for her father after all, and one of the Twenty Eight she may be, but she hadn’t declared for one or the other. And there were expectations.

He nodded at Crabbe again and before she could blink he was pointing his wand at her and a sharp pain was spreading across her face. Merlin, she thought, how had Longbottom not made a sound. It was like fire dancing on her skin, the effects of the curse spreading out from where the cut was as the warm blood dripped down her face and into the white collar of her shirt. Behind her she heard the whispers of her classmates, among them Pansy’s taunting voice and Blaise’s smug one. Carrow eyed her in disgust as the tears welled in her eyes, Daphne willing them not to spill over, and jerked his head to motion her back into her seat. She did not make eye contact as she went, just kept her head down and one hand pressed to her face to staunch the blood.

Someone took her arm and guided her silently, Theo, she realised by the white-knuckled grip. He would be furious, she knew, even if he could not say anything with fear for his father’s reaction. Mr. Nott was a terrifying man, and Daphne could not blame her friend for his hesitance.

Carrow was still speaking. Derogatory comment after derogatory comment about muggles, muggle-borns, half-bloods, anything and everything in between. Finnigan’s face is turning red, his hands are shaking, and maybe it’s the blood loss, maybe it’s the tightly coiled anger that has been inside of her for months, but Daphne can’t take it.

“I’d rather be muggle-born than part pig,” she said with a voice of steel, eyes directed to the man in front of her pointedly.

The room is silent. She sits straight-backed and tall in her seat, she can feel the blood dripping onto her starched white collar, and for the first time in her life she feels free.

Her classmates are staring at her wide-eyed. Gryffindors in shock, Slytherin’s in horror. Theo, the only genuine person left in her life who truly knows her, has a mask of ice but panic in the tight press of his mouth. He’s scared for her, as he should be, but Daphne simply shakes her hair and holds her head up high. She refuses to let herself show any weakness. Whatever else they may be, a Greengrass is not weak.

“Miss Greengrass,” her professor says dangerously, “you would do well to remember just whose side you’re on.”

She swallows and lets out an undignified laugh. “I’m on any side that’s not yours, pig.”

They’re locked in a battle of wills. Daphne can see his hand twitching to his wand but the little brains he does have fighting back, remembering her name, who her father is. What the Dark Lord has in store for her family. And killing her now, ruining her in front of blood-traitor Gryffindors would be a mistake. She does not look away. To do so is to sign her own death warrant.

“Detention, Greengrass,” Carrow says finally. “Tonight, after dinner.”

As he turns away she lets her shoulders slump ever so slightly, not enough for anyone who doesn’t know her well enough to notice, but Theo does. He nudges her infinitesimally, to show her his fear, his concern, his support. Whispers erupt from the from of the room but they are quickly shut down. Finnigan is still turned to her, his brow furrowed and with a question on his lips. She avoids his gaze pointedly and focuses back on the book open on her desk.

She’s jumpy for the rest of the day, just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Detention would not be the end of it, not for what she has done. It’s not just that she mouthed off to her professor, but she has picked a side. For all intents and purposes. And it’s not the Dark Lord’s. Her blood may be pure but they would drain it from her if it meant she would crawl at their feet in supplication.

* * *

It isn’t until dinner that those fears are realised. The entire school is seated in the Great Hall, and Daphne’s face is still showing evidence of the curse. The blood has been cleaned away but a thin cut slashes her cheek. Tori had seen her in the corridor during lessons and tried to ask her about it, but Daphne had shaken her head in warning. The food has just cleared away when Daphne feels eyes on her, and looks up to see both Carrows watching her gleefully. Then She-Carrow glances to the Ravenclaw table, where Tori is sitting with her friends, and grins a bloody smile. Daphne panicked. Her sister was only fourteen. Quiet, smart as a whip, most people didn’t even realise they were related. And now they were going to punish her for Daphne’s reckless choices.

A bell chimes from the head table, Snape’s only way to gain their attention, lacking the commanding presence of the late Albus Dumbledore. Their headmaster looks bored, waving a hand to Professor Carrow, giving him the floor.

“Detention requires some fresh blood,” he said gleefully. “Our older students are ready to pass on their knowledge, to teach, and there is no time like the present.”

Daphne’s stomach dropped.

“As of tonight,” Carrow continued, “a few specially chosen and capable students will be paired up with one of our prefects and mentored in the ways of discipline.”

He looks right at Daphne with his piggy eyes and smirks. She knows what this means. This is for her and her father. Her sweet, cheery, kind-hearted sister is going to be taken to the dungeons and forced to go against everything in her nature. Astoria was a soft-touch, avoiding killing even insects, instead spending an inordinate amount of time trying to catch them and put them back out the nearest window.

Sure enough, Astoria Greengrass was the first name that rolled off of Carrow’s bloodless lips. Daphne watched as her sister’s face fell and her hands trembled, dropping her fork to her plate with a clatter. Her friends tried to comfort her, wrapping their arms over her shoulder. All Daphne could feel was the hot guilt pooling in her stomach. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. Next to her, Theo put a hand on her thigh and squeezed.

Tonight, Daphne thought, would be a very bad night.

**Author's Note:**

> This work is a part of the same universe at For You, I Would Slay Dragons. A wedding is mentioned in that story and this one is about how those two characters met.


End file.
